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Nordbex aims to future-proof Swedish district heating with private capital
As aging combined heat and power (CHP) plants reach end-of-life and climate requirements tighten, many Swedish municipalities face a tough equation: they need new local energy capacity, but have limited room to invest. According to Carl Berglund, Co-Founder and CCO at Nordbex, one way forward is privately financed, purpose-built CHP with carbon capture designed in from day one.
“We deliver new energy capacity without adding pressure to municipal balance sheets,” he says.
Municipalities are expected to secure reliable energy production at the same time as investment headroom shrinks and decarbonisation targets become more demanding. On top of that, a significant share of existing CHP assets are approaching replacement. For Berglund, this combination makes the traditional approach to building and funding local energy increasingly difficult to sustain.
Nordbex’s response is to develop new greenfield facilities where dispatchable heat and power are paired with fully integrated CO₂ capture as part of the original plant design. The projects are financed entirely with private capital and developed in collaboration with established international partners in carbon capture.
“Local, dependable heat and power is not new,” Berglund says. “What’s new is doing it with integrated capture — and doing it without municipalities taking the investment risk.”
A proven concept before it came to Sweden
Nordbex is taking a different route than much of the CHP sector. Instead of retrofitting carbon capture onto existing facilities, the company builds new plants from scratch. The founders bring experience from earlier work developing and delivering one of the world’s first power-generating plants with fully integrated carbon capture in the UK.
“That plant is operating today, commercially viable, and fully unsubsidised — which shows the model can work both technically and economically,” Berglund says.
So far, Nordbex has kept a low profile, prioritising project development and securing the first Swedish site before communicating its plans publicly. The company is now focusing on locations where the need is most urgent: municipalities facing replacement cycles, or regions where additional local energy supply is required.
From Nybro to national scale
Nordbex’s first Swedish project is being developed in Nybro, in Kalmar County. Berglund says the ambition is to have five facilities either operating or under construction by 2034, corresponding to roughly one million tonnes of captured CO₂ per year.
“Climate impact has to rest on sound business logic,” he concludes. “That’s how you reach real scale — and real outcomes.”
About Nordbex
Nordbex is a Swedish energy company developing and privately financing new BioCCUS facilities (bioenergy with CO₂ capture) that produce heat and power with capture integrated from the outset. The company focuses on greenfield projects intended to replace aging CHP infrastructure, with the goal of having five facilities in operation by 2034.
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